Feet First: Landfall
by M306117
Summary: ODST GySgt Michael Fletcher, abducted mid-drop, finds himself in a world of colourful talking ponies.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

 **Unknown Location**

There are a number of ways to tell if a mission has gone wrong or is going wrong, like enemy air support coming into play when it shouldn't or receiving orders from command to hold out for as long as possible while an extraction plan is worked out, or when the five kilometre long ship three-hundred ODSTs are dropping onto suddenly jumps into slipspace with no warning, scattering everyone and unleashing a wide reaching EMP blast.

The last of these happened to Gunnery Sergeant Michael Fletcher as he and his squad fell feet first into hell to secure and destroy the only Covenant ship to breach the orbital defence grid and make it to Earth unharmed.

What had been a routine drop turned catastrophic as every electronic system on the drop pods went offline and only worsened when the shockwave hit, scattering everybody to the four points of the compass. Those lucky enough to remain conscious managed to pop their emergency shuts and land with some modicum of success, while those who blacked out found themselves playing the cruel game of chance with the odds stacked heavily against them.

Michael was one of the unlucky ODSTs, his last memory before darkness engulfed his vision was that of a skyscraper coming up to greet him and both mild acceptance and annoyance at meeting his end this way. He had been through a lot in his fourteen years in the Marines and Helljumpers, enough to have come to terms with the possibility of dying of unnatural causes, but part of him hoped for a more dignified death than crashing into a building in a metal egg without firing his weapon.

He was justifiable surprised when he came to sometime afterwards, very much alive and still nestled in his pod, albeit with a colossal migraine that made his head feel like it was splitting open at the seams, with his bewilderment growing when it dawned on him the scenery surrounding him was that of a small, wooden cottage filled with bird boxes and mouse holes. New Mombasa was one of Earth's most modern cities, boasting architecture to match.

The bold and stark lines that defined the mega city did not fit with the wood panelling and chintzy furniture he was staring out at through broken hatches on his drop pod, nor did the vast swatch of greenery visible through the windows on the walls. Concrete was what he should be seeing, burning and wrecked after an occupation by the Covenant.

This was another indicator the mission had gone wrong, kicking Michael's instincts into gear. He placed a hand on his pistol, caressing the familiar contours, while the other activated the manual release for his pod's door, blasting it off with enough force to hit the wall opposite and become wedged.

Drawing his sidearm and holding it out level, Michael took his first step out of the ruined HEV and almost collapsed to one knee as the migraine felt like it doubled, causing his vision to fade in and out as he fought to overcome the pain. With gritted teeth, Michael forced himself over to the nearest window and peered out to see neither towering buildings nor UNSC aircraft coming in to reinforce the troops on the ground.

He saw a clear blue sky, rolling fields and a thick forest instead. Briefly he contended with the idea his pod had become blown radically off course and landed in a more temperate climate than the savannah and deserts of Africa but discarded it just as quickly. The idea was impossible for a number of reasons, chief amongst them the odds of his pod making an upright and survivable landing after such a rude trajectory readjustment.

Could the in atmosphere slipspace jump have played a part, he wondered, knowing the slippery mechanics of the realm meant nothing could be ruled out for definite. Of course, his grasp on quantum mechanics and particle physics was rudimentary at best so a half assed guess was the best he could manage.

The migraine increased again, seemingly focused right behind his eyes, and Michel's focus lessened ever so slightly as he tried to reign it in once more with only partial success. When his vision came back, or the flashes appearing before his eyes died down enough to make sense of anything, he saw six blobs of colours walking down a dirt path right towards him with Michael's first thought on whether they were friendly or not.

He wasn't entirely sure where on Earth he was, if he was even on Earth anymore, with the worst imaginable pain resonating throughout his head, with no idea if anyone from his squad was nearby or not. Best case scenario held that the blobs were friendly, they were human and they knew exactly where he was and how to get home but the worst case scenario was pretty much the opposite of that.

Trained and experience as he was, Michael knew his ability to aim and fire any of his weapons was severely hampered by the migraine and the spotty vision. If these were hostiles, he'd be in no position to fight back and be completely at their mercy. If they were friendlies then he'd be absolutely fine but veteran ODSTs didn't become veterans by assuming the best.

They expected the worst and planned accordingly. That meant fleeing until the migraine subsided or someone from the UNSC could retrieve him, so Michael did just that.

He returned to his HEV and plucked the battle rifle from its holster, cradling it like a newborn baby as he headed in the opposite direction of the blobs of colour, around his pod into what he took to be a very small kitchen and through a backdoor where nothing but green greeted him, hills to his left and forests to his right.

He chose the forests, managing to get thirty of forty metres into the overgrown mess of trees and tangled roots before some unknown gate burst and allowed a surge of pain to flood his head.

Michael dropped his weapon, dropped to his knees, then fell face first onto the spongy forest floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

 **Unknown location**

Michael came to with his face still pressed hard against the forest floor, his vision filled with nothing more than grass and dirt and insects that had grown accustomed to his presence. He was still wearing his armour, which meant he hadn't been found and stripped of everything of value, and he was still breathing which meant the atmosphere was human friendly.

He had no idea how long he had been out but guessed over an hour, perhaps more, which was far beyond the fifteen minute capacity of his suit's internal supply which was designed to kick in when the air quality grew too low, or lacked the necessary gasses for continued human survival. That puzzled Michael a little, given how rare it was to find planets with just the right mix of oxygen and nitrogen to sustain Earth-normal life, but he was mostly thankful for it.

Dying from asphyxiation wasn't much better than digging his own grave on a combat drop.

The lone ODST pushed himself up and wobbled to his knees, happy to note that both the migraine was gone as well and his combat capabilities were pretty much restored, especially when his battle rifle was back in its rightful place. Now he could focus on assessing his situation more properly and be able to fight back against any and all hostiles.

His first step was to check himself over for any kind of injury or wound, coming up clean, then visually confirm his battle rifle held the correct amount of rounds in its thirty-six round magazine, slapping it back into place when the glint of brass winked up at him.

Good.

Michael shouldered his rifle and moved in a half crouch back towards the cottage he had left, diverting fifty metres west and going from cover to cover, stopping and listening each time for any indication there were patrols in amongst the trees with him but there was nothing, just rustling leaves and the whisper of wind and the call of birds.

Bad.

Despite the very little he had seen, Michael knew that someone or something lived very close to the cottage, itself showing clear signs of recent habitation, but there was nothing at all searching the immediate area for anything out of the ordinary. Or, if they had, they weren't very good at it due to missing an unconscious ODST a scant thirty metres from the cottage. If that were the case, might they have mistaken his very unnatural drop pod as a naturally occurring phenomenon that just happened to land on their planet?

He couldn't be sure. Nobody was that stupid but anyone who didn't conduct a thorough search of the surrounding area certainly wasn't very bright.

Michael shook his head minutely and crept ever closer to the edge of the trees, slowing to a halt behind a fallen log when he heard the first sign of intelligent life, a smattering of conversation too faint to properly listen in on, provided it was even a language Michael knew or his helmet could translate. He figured there were about three or four speakers, maybe more, based on the different intonations and pacing of the mumbled words as he dropped to his stomach and began crawling forwards, inch by inch through the thicker patches of grass that littered the floor until, and to his shock, the conversation became audible and understandable and without his helmet's translation suite kicking in to offer an oddly monotone rendition of whatever language it was he was listening to.

'Any idea, Twi?' a drawling voice asked, drifting through the gnarled trees to reach the lone trooper who stopped and listened. It was feminine, definitely, and in possession of a southern twang that made Michael think of the plantations of old in America's southern regions during the early years.

Why his mind had brought up that image, he didn't know. It just had.

'Not yet, Applejack,' a second voice said. This one was more refined, or at least didn't have a drawl that didn't make the letter I sound like a drawn out Y, with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty as they no doubt assessed the situation that was the crashed HEV in the small cottage. Why else would they be out here? 'It's clearly artificial, not natural, and there's space inside for something to fit inside it, so it's some form of transport for whoever created it, but beyond that? I've no idea.'

'It's a pretty cool idea for a transport thing,' a third voice put forward, exuberance and enthusiasm for the unusual situation readily apparent alongside what Michael could only classify as self-confidence on a massive scale, which made him frown. He wasn't particularly a fan of braggarts and egotists. If you were good at something, great. If you made a massive deal about it, bad. 'Falling from the sky in a ball of fire and crashing into the ground like that? That'd be so cool to do!'

'Unless your house is in the way,' a fourth person muttered, so quietly in fact Michael was sure he was imagining things. 'Then it's not so cool, is it?'

'Sorry, Fluttershy. I didn't mean-'

'If it's supposed to be transport for something, then where's the person who sits inside it?' another asked, abruptly cutting in either on purpose or without realising it, their accent possessing an air of sophistication that sounded straight out of a World War Two movie, all prim and proper, though Michael fixated on the fact he had yet to hear a male voice. Every single one so far was female.

'Not here,' Twi said. 'Obviously, but they can't have gotten too far, can they? It's only been an hour since it came down, and we didn't see any tracks leading away from the cottage, so whoever, or whatever, walked away.'

'Unless they can fly,' a sixth voice said. Where the boastful one sounded enthusiastic, this one verged on hyperactivity. Michael could practically sense the energy being given off by the speaker when the talked, imaging a person hopping from foot to foot or twitching with a nervous kind of energy, and figured they must be on some sort of amphetamine.

'If they can fly, why would they need a vehicle to get down here?' Twi shot back.

'Why would they need to crash a pod into the ground in the first place?' World War Two asked. 'So barbaric, and unsafe.'

'Who knows? Applejack said. 'Whatever came down in the pod, it ain't here now. Ah reckon we should be worrying less about how it got here and more on why it's arrived, and where it is.'

'You don't think it's in there, do you?' the braggart said, a hint of fear in her voice as she pointed to some unknown location, probably the forest given it was the only major geographical feature around. All Michael had seen in the opposite direction was rolling hills and plains, somewhere unsuitable for hiding out in.

'If it is, let's hope it can look after itself,' Twi said.

There was the same trill of trepidation in her voice as the braggart's, like the forest was regarded as so dangerous a place that the mere mention of it was enough to instil fear in a person. It made Michael frown and think, glancing up at the trees surrounding him and trying to gauge the atmosphere.

Sure, the trees were twisted and gnarled and draped in vines but they weren't scary. Wraiths and Elites were scary, especially when they were charging at you and spewing bolts of superheated plasma, but not trees, unless it wasn't the flora that gave the speakers pause but the _fauna_. Animals had a scary factor all to themselves, either due to a lumbering size or by way of a ferocious savagery that caused them to obliterate everything in their path, or die trying.

 _That_ gave Michael pause, enough of one to cast his eye across the terrain again in search of a potentially hostile creature that might want to do him harm but saw nothing, just swaying trees and shafts of sunlight breaking through the canopy overhead.

He shook his head and focused back on the direction of the voices, resuming his slow and methodical crawling through the undergrowth, only now with an uneasy feeling in the back of his head at the idea of some animal attacking him. He might have been a veteran ODST but that didn't mean he was infallible. This forest was some predator's home turf, a place it had grown up in and adapted to. It could be camouflaged and able to swing from branch to branch without making a single sound, or disguise itself as some shrubbery and be lying in wait for any hapless meal that came its way.

 _Not me_ , Michael thought. _I'm not like most other things in this forest._

His grip on the battle rifle increased a little but he forced himself to stay calm, to think logically rather than emotionally, and banished the uneasy feeling to a dark corner of his mind.

'What are we going to do with the pod, Twilight?' World War Two asked as he edged closer. 'Surely, we can't leave it there.'

'No, we can't,' Twi said. 'Once I'm sure it's safe to do so, I'll remove it and take it back to my lab.' There was a sound Michael could only describe as two halves of a coconut being banged together several times, then, 'Who knows what I can learn from it! The metallurgy alone might help us create more heat resistant materials, and the overall design could revolutionise cart safety standards.'

'Sure, Twilight,' the braggart said. 'Because something that fell from the sky in a ball of fire was destined to make our carts safer.'

'There were the first two things that popped into my head, Rainbow Dash,' Twi said. 'I _know_ we can learn so much more from this than that, but until I start taking it apart I _won't_ know.' She sighed. 'If only the creature that came down in it was here to talk to us, we could learn even more.'

'Or we could be its first victims,' Applejack muttered darkly. 'We still don't know why it came here, or why it ain't sticking around its pod. It might not be as friendly as us.'

A pregnant pause descended over everyone at that, lasting long enough that Michael made it to the edge of the forest with nothing but the sounds of the trees and insects to fill his ears but when he finally made it, when he finally laid eyes on the six women who had been talking, he stopped hearing everything else.

Working on the principle he could understand them and that he could breathe the atmosphere without keeling over dead, Michael assumed he was on some backwater colony somewhere that the UNSC had lost touch with, long enough in fact that the colonists had forgotten about ODSTs and their chosen method of entry, and some terrible catastrophe had occurred which forced technology to take several steps backwards if carts were in use.

He did not expect to see horses.

Well, ponies to be technically accurate given their sizes but for the moment, all Michael was able to focus his mind on was the fact he could understand these six creatures when he shouldn't have been able to. The chances these creatures/aliens/ponies had developed a language completely identical to English were so remote that it was more likely he could breathe in space with no suit on. It just couldn't happen.

 _Yet here it is_ , Michael thought. _These six alien ponies are speaking English._

It wasn't possible, but it was happening.

This kept whirling around in his head, drowning out all other conscious thoughts that should have been occupying his mind like whether or not he should initiate contact with them or fall back and assess and evaluate, or draw them off somehow so he could scavenge his supplies from his crash drop pod.

It was so all encompassing that Michael failed to notice when a few globs of saliva dripped down from above, landing in the grass around him with soft whumps, finally looking up when a few strands landed on the scope of his battle rifle and kicked the trained ODST in him back into gear. He looked straight up into the branches above, not in the slow motion he should have used to avoid attracting undue attention but a sudden and instant movement, oblivious to the fact he was on the boundary between visible and invisible and any rapid motions on his part wouldn't be hidden by shadows and foliage.

What he wasn't oblivious to was a mass of brown fur hanging above him, a row of sharp and yellowed teeth visible in a gaping maw drawn back in a snarl, beady black eyes glaring down at the armoured interloper staring back with an impassive silver face. It looked like a baboon, only smaller and more dangerous as a result of the compression.

Whatever it was, it did not look friendly and it certainly did not look harmless.

Michael weighed his options up, wincing when he did.

He had no idea where he was, how he had gotten here or whether the local natives were friendly. Training and instinct told him to keep to the shadows to observe what he could and make an informed decision on what to do next, requiring him to avoid detection from these six impossible ponies, which would call for him to slip back into the forest as silently as he had crawled out of it.

The only problem was the mini baboon was getting ready to pounce judging by the tensing of its legs and fixation of its stare, and the damn thing was no doubt going to holler and scream when it did which would draw the attention of the nearby locals, alerting them to his presence before he was ready for them to know it.

He had no way of taking the mini baboon out silently before it could jump, his battle rifle and pistol both lacking a suppressor and even if they had one, they didn't entirely silence the gunshot, just quietened it down enough so that people from a mile away could hear it. The six ponies would hear it, come over to investigate and find a single ODST lying on his back in the grass.

The only truly silent weapon Michael had was his knife but that was a close range tool, useful only when the opponent was within arm's reach, and there was no guarantee the blade would find a vital location instantly enough to kill the beast quickly, and he still had to contend with it screaming as it jumped down at him.

One option was to just let it jump down and claw at him, hoping against hope his armour could protect him and that the six ponies would flee in terror at its primal screeching, giving him a chance to kill the mini baboon and run deeper into the forest unnoticed but only a small one. Hell, the six ponies could be professional baboon killers for all he knew, springing into action upon the mere sound of one.

No matter which course he took, no small amount of noise would be made and his position would be compromised, so Michael did what every Helljumper did when every path led to a fight: he jumped feet first into it.

He flicked his battle rifle into full auto and rolled onto his back, pointing the muzzle straight up at the mini baboon that jumped down when he moved, howling like a monster caught in a trap with its fangs bared and its claws out, a furry engine of destruction driven by primal instinct calling for it to drive out the intruder in its territory, but Michael was his own force of destruction.

The moment his rifle was aimed squarely at the animal his trigger finger was off, pulling down tight around the curved piece of metal that told the weapon it was time to fire and made it belch fire and spit lead, expending a third of a magazine before the beast slammed into him. Adrenaline flooded his system and ramped his senses up to eleven, reducing everything to a high speed, slow motion display where training and reflex took over as the mini baboon flailed on top of him, either scrabbling for purchase on his armour or recovering from the multitude of wounds it had suffered.

Whatever the reason, Michael threw it off and rolled to his feet, battle rifle switched back to burst fire, backpedalling as fast as he could into the open fields and freedom of movement, pumping burst after burst into the mini baboon every time he saw it twitch or make a move to get up until the bolt on his weapon locked open, signalling the magazine was empty, and the creature fell still.

Heart hammering away in his chest at a thousand beats a minute and pounding in his ears, Michael dropped the empty magazine and slipped a fresh one into place as he finally came to a stop, rifle still pointed at the now very dead mini baboon, a mess of red and tattered flesh lying inert on the forest floor, turning on his heel at the sound of a shocked gasp.

The six ponies that had come to investigate his pod were standing aghast, mouths hanging open as they looked upon the faceless black clad figure, spattered with mud and blood and fur, who held a weapon breathing smoke and roared with thunder, and an unnatural silence fell over everyone and everything.

Then, as one, the ponies fled.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

 **Unknown location**

He let them go.

There was no point in giving chase because they'd take it the wrong way. An alien figure that had just killed another creature coming after them? They'd fear for their lives and wrongly assume he was planning on killing them too. Of course, they might also take his lack of movement as an indicator he was going to stalk them instead, going after the six of them one by one in weird and horrific ways.

That, and his armour was covered in mud and blood and tufts of fur from his time in the forest. It hardly looked welcoming. Well, even less welcoming considering the plating was matte black and he appeared to have no face.

So Michael let them go, watching as they ran towards a nearby town that seemed very archaic with not one single building built out of metal or concrete, seeing instead wattle and daub structures with thatched roofs topping the scene off. He spied a river running through town and several bridges that crossed it, and a farm or two on the nearby hills. It seemed very quaint.

He waited until the ponies (aliens) were gone from view before heading into the cottage his pod had crashed into, ducking under the low doorframe to find himself in the living room that, aside from the huge lump of charred human metal sitting in the middle of the room, appeared to be a shrine to small animals with dozens of bird boxes and mouse holes filling the walls, as well as the usual assortment of furniture that came with being the main room of any home.

Michael edged around his drop pod and went into the kitchen, sorting through the cabinets to find the biggest bowl he could and filling it with water from the sink, grabbing a nearby towel too, then located a nearby mirror big enough to serve his purposes. Looking into it, Michael saw his armour was still more or less pristine, scratch marks notwithstanding, just like it had been when he first entered his pod high above New Mombasa what felt like only a few short hours ago.

His name was still etched onto the chest and his rank was still emblazoned on his shoulder, and all his pouches were still attached and full of the various items they held that came in useful at random points during a deployment, but his suit was stained with mud and blood and hair that had gotten stuck, so dipping the towel into the bucket Michael got to work on cleaning his armour.

To do it right, he should have taken everything off but he was unwilling to do that, still unsure about just where he was and wary of an attack by the natives, spooked by his drastic appearance into doing something very stupid. Even if the plating wasn't powerful enough to stop whatever weapons they had, the helmet still carried with it advanced imaging software and the suit itself was covered with pockets and pouches and clips for ammo and equipment.

It also meant he couldn't wash the back of him as well as the front, humanity able to do a lot of things but spinning their heads in a half circle without breaking their necks wasn't one of them. Not yet, anyway, and when he was done Michael looked a little better, the floor beneath him wet from dripping water and the bowl filled with murky mud-blood combination, but nowhere near anything approaching parade ready, unless it was a parade meant to show off real combat troops, in which case he was a little too clean for that.

He poured the water away and hefted his rifle, walking back outside to look at the far off town again and try to spot any shapes that might be approaching his location. There was none so he went back inside again, this time to grab a chair that was just about big enough to support his bulk. His legs still stuck out when he sat on it, or his knees were up by his ears if he tried to avoid looking too relaxed, but it held him.

Then, after placing his battle rifle on the ground beside him, Michael settled in to wait for the six ponies from earlier to return.

 **Unknown location**

They returned close to three hours later, approaching warily and with a few dozen others behind them, some decked out in golden armour reminiscent of the Ancient Romans, or maybe the Ancient Greeks, which Michael took to be members of a local militia or police force. He stood when the group came within fifty metres, leaving his battle rifle on the ground but keeping his pistol in its holster on his thigh.

When he did that, the group came to a grinding halt and the ones in armour stepped to the sides, not to clear a path but move into flanking positions if necessary. Two stayed in front of the crowd as protection but the rest continued to fan out, three to a side.

Another of the alien ponies detached themselves from the group, a lavender coloured one that Michael recalled was Twi, or Twilight, and the one who had expressed such interest in examining his drop pod earlier. She appeared nervous and rightly so, which surprised Michael because he hadn't expected to be able to read her facial expression. More than that, he was astounded at how _human_ her features were.

No, that wasn't quite right. It was still the face of a horse, but at the same time it wasn't, flitting between the two depending on which part Michael's eyes were focused on like a Rubin vase, seeing at one point a horse and then a face, but all the while still able to discern emotions.

He took a few steps towards Twi, both to cut down on how long it would take for them to draw close and to symbolically show he wasn't looking for a fight by moving away from his gun. He saw her eyes flit to the battle rifle, and then the pistol on his thigh, and that the fear began to diminish slightly. She knew he was still armed but she knew he wasn't going to hurt her.

When the gap was a little over a dozen metres, both parties stopped as an unnatural silence fell over everything. Up close, Michael saw Twi was actually a unicorn, sporting a horned appendage that poked through her hair, as were a number of others behind her. The rest seemed like normal ponies, coat and mane colours aside, but then he saw others had wings, making them Pegasi. This place, wherever it was, grew stranger and stranger with each new discovery.

Michael looked at Twi as she looked at him, unsure of how to go about next. In his peripheral vision, the lone trooper saw the militia members had gotten him flanked with clear lines of sight, those with horns gathering what he could only assume was magic in preparation for an attack. The others just gave him steely looks.

Turning back to Twi, Michael said, 'I can understand you,' but when he did, he got the distinct impression he _wasn't_ speaking English, even though every thought in his mind so far had been in English, and every word he had heard was in English. Yet when he spoke, his mouth seemed to make unfamiliar shapes and produce words that, to his ears, were wholly and utterly wrong despite sounding wholly and utterly _right_.

Even though they sounded wrong to him, they apparently sounded right to Twi who went, 'Really? How?'

'I don't know,' Michael said.

'Wow,' Twilight whispered. 'We can already understand each other. What are the odds of that?'

'Too big to be a coincidence,' Michael said. 'Trust me on that. I've met enough alien species to know that a shared language is just not possible.'

'You've met other aliens as well?'

A glimmer of excitement crept into her eyes that Michael found insulting, that the possibility of meeting other races from other worlds was something to look forward to rather than dreaded, but he forced himself to relax. The pony before him hadn't spent most of her life fearing the day aliens finally came knocking, and humanity itself had once looked to the stars with optimism rather than fear.

'More or less,' he said. 'I don't really want to talk about it here. It's... not something to bring up during this kind of an encounter.'

'Oh,' Twilight said.

Michael saw she wanted to press the issue more, an innate curiosity to know more about new and fascinating things buried deep within, but her common sense kicked in and told her to drop it, temporarily at least. His tone of voice hadn't suggested she could ignore him and ask anyway, and Michael didn't want to talk about alien races waging genocidal campaigns upon discovering a new species during his own encounter with intelligent life.

'I'm Twilight Sparkle,' she said a moment later.

'Gunnery Sergeant Michael Fletcher,' he said.

They dropped into another silence, neither side really know what to do next. Introductions had been made but what was supposed to be a momentous occasion for both sides was marred by Michael's dramatic reveal a few short hours ago, the pony before him seemingly uncertain about how to proceed when confronted with a being that had not only watched her from the undergrowth of some trees, but had also killed another living thing before her eyes.

Michael could see the corpse of the mini-baboon in the corner of his eye, a bloodied heap of flesh, and he knew Twilight Sparkle was able to see it, too.

He looked at it fully, turning his whole head, and said, 'Self defence. I don't kill indiscriminately.'

Twilight Sparkle looked at it as well and said, 'Did you have to kill it at all?'

'Did it have to attack me?' Michael said back. 'I was doing nothing to provoke it in any way.'

'It was probably just defending its territory,' Twilight said.

'So I was supposed to just let it claw at me, trying to kill me? Please. It was a feral animal. Don't lose sleep about it. I won't.'

The pony turned her head sharply to look at him with a steely glare and said, 'And that gives you the right to kill it? Because it was wild?'

'No,' Michael said. 'Because it was trying to _kill_ _me_ gives me the right. Had it put on some big show of acting tough, to try and scare me off, I would have let the fucking thing live. Instead, because it tried to maul me, I responded in kind.'

'It might have a family somewhere.'

'So might I,' Michael said. 'In fact, I do. How might they respond if they learned I allowed myself to be killed by some feral beast because I didn't want to hurt it?'

When Twilight didn't respond, and instead looked away, he added, 'That's what I thought. So do me a favour and grow up. It's a cruel fucking universe out there. Shit like this happens all over the place.'

'You could have thrown it off,' Twilight said quietly.

'Well, the next time my life is on the line and there's only time for a split second decision, we'll let _you_ make the call, shall we?' Michael said. 'Or better yet, put you in that situation and see what kind of fucking call you make!'

The ponies in armour surrounding him took a step forward, upping their glares, incensed by his outburst towards someone they were more than likely here to protect but, far from intimidated by the posturing, their actions just annoyed Michael.

'Oh, piss off with that,' he shot at them. 'You're all four foot shortcakes and nothing, _nothing_ , compared to what I deal with on a daily basis. Come back when you're nine feet tall and have fangs and shit.'

They paused, unsure of how to proceed against a subject that hadn't backed down, but Twilight Sparkle beat them to the punch with, 'Why are you here?'

'No idea,' Michael said with a shrug. 'The last I knew, I was hot dropping into battle above a planet that is most definitely not this one when our target made a slipspace jump, knocking us all to the four winds and knocking me out. Next thing, I'm here and getting mauled by wild beasts and being told I the one in the wrong for killing it in self defence.'

'You don't know why you're here?' Twilight said.

'No,' Michael said. 'None at all. Hence why I said I don't know why I'm here. My orders were to join a three-hundred strong ODST drop onto a hostile ship, board and capture it, and find out why it arrived at our planet. My orders did not tell me to land in a rural area on an alien planet. Nor did I miss my LZ.'

He jerked a thumb at the cottage and the drop pod it contained, and told Twilight Sparkle, 'That pod is designed to get a person from high orbit to ground level and nothing else. It doesn't travel hundreds, or thousands, of light years to arrive on unknown worlds. How I arrived here is beyond me, but I can tell you right now that it was not intentional on my part. Either the slipspace rupture the Covies made somehow sent me here, or someone on your planet summoned me by some kind of voodoo magic.'

'Why would someone bring you here?' Twilight Sparkle asked.

'No idea,' Michael said. 'You're the one who lives here, so if anyone should know it's you. If I had to guess, it would be because some great terror or horror is loose on the planet and you need help to stop it, help only I can provide. That's how it usually works in those crappy stories, right?'

'There's no threat in Equestria,' Twilight said, adamant. 'If there was, I'd know. And even if there was, we wouldn't need the help of an alien.'

'That you know of,' Michael said.

'What do you think is the answer?'

The lone trooper shrugged.

'Dunno. The odds of an in atmosphere slipspace jump transporting me here are non-existent, at least as far as I know, which points to some third party interfering and bringing me here, which means they must have a reason. You don't just save a single ODST just to dump them on some alien world, not for the hell of it.'

'That makes... sense,' Twilight agreed. 'Unless that person was hoping you'd attack us or we'd attack you so they could watch what follows.'

'If that's their plan, then they picked the wrong guy for that,' Michael said. 'Wrong species, too. I know an Elite would happily go to town on you all if you appeared heretical in any way.'

'What's an Elite?'

'Scarier than them, that's for sure,' Michael said as he pointed to the ponies in armour. 'Deadlier, too. Let's hope you never meet one.'

'Yeah, because your charm is making me want to meet other alien species so much,' Twilight muttered under her breath.

'Be thankful,' Michael said. 'My past encounters with extraterrestrial life has seen me kill them the moment we meet. Count your lucky stars that didn't come to include you.'

By way of a response, Twilight looked at the dead baboon with a less than amused expression.

'I had my gun trained on you six long before I knew that was there. If I wanted to kill you...'

He let that hang in the air for a long moment, watching as Twilight's expression fell and the guards took another step towards him at the perceived threat but paid them no mind. He'd already worked out his motions should they move in to attack. Draw his pistol, drop the unicorns and then the Pegasi, leaving the ground pounders for last, before shooting down whatever ponies in the crowd made attempts to attack him.

After that it, would be as simple as running into the forest to eke out some sort of living, working out a way to get home by himself or figuring out why it was he had been brought here in the first place, and then doing whatever it was he needed to do so he could return home to Earth and help eradicate every last trace of the Covenant from Earth for good.

But, he never got that far because, once more, Twilight Sparkle spoke up before the guards could respond.

'Okay,' she said. 'Let's go and speak with Princess Celestia. If anyone knows of any threats in Equestria, it'll be her. I think the sooner we get you home, the better.'

'Agreed,' Michael said. 'Lead the way.'


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

 **Golden Oaks Library, Ponyville**

Michael took an almost immediate dislike to Princess Celestia.

It wasn't because she came off as arrogant or smug or self centred, far from it given she seemed genuinely concerned for his situation and more humble than some other dignitaries he had met, but because she had sent Twilight Sparkle to meet with him. He hadn't expected her to come herself, not when initial reports said that the strange alien being could potentially be hostile, but a diplomat or ambassador working on her behalf to deal with the newly arrived visitor, which is what Michael first took Twilight Sparkle to be.

His dislike of the Equestrian ruler came about after learning Twilight Sparkle was not an ambassador, or a diplomat, but her student, and that Celestia hadn't objected to the young unicorn's request to go out and investigate the strange being lingering in the woods. Okay, she had sent a group of guards with her but that hardly made it right, and neither was allowing such a large crowd to follow them out. What she _should_ have done was request more guards, decline Twilight's offer and send a trained and experienced diplomat, a person whose job it was to talk with others and negotiate favourable terms, to speak with him.

Instead, rather than endear herself to the misplaced ODST, she came across as a little naive, or reckless with the lives of those under her, and maybe a little dismissive of those under her employ. In the three hours between Michael making his debut and Twilight returning to the cottage, she could have summoned as many trained negotiators as she'd liked but no, her preferred course of action was to send the equivalent of a university student out into harm's way.

He had a better opinion of her sister and co-ruler, Luna, if only because the other princess had yet to say or do anything to annoy him, or do anything really beyond stand to the left of Celestia and say nothing, watching him carefully as introductions were made all around in Twilight's home, Ponyville's library built from a giant oak tree.

'Gunnery Sergeant Michael Fletcher,' the sole human in a room full of ponies said. 'UNSC Marine Corps, 105th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 16th Shock Troops, 7th Battalion, and I have no clue as to how I got here.'

'None at all?' Celestia asked.

'No, actually, I do know,' Michael said. 'I just figured I'd say I have no clue for shits and giggles. Christ.'

He shook his head in mild annoyance as Celestia, and some of the other ponies filling the room, gave him glares of varying intensities, including two of the guards that had followed him and Twilight back from the cottage. They fixed him with steely glowers and took half a step forwards but that was it, staying behind and to the sides of the two princesses.

'He seems to think he was brought here by somebody,' Twilight said. 'That there's a threat in Equestria we need his help to stop.'

'A threat?' Celestia said. 'What kind?'

Michael shrugged. 'No idea, but whatever it is has to be bad if they've sent a Helljumper like me here.'

'And what is it you do?' Celestia asked.

'I'm combat infantry,' Michael began. 'Special operations, specifically, trained to hot drop from orbit into battle and turn even the shittiest situation around. Kinda like those two but, you know, I'm actually dangerous and not just for decoration. I've earned my scars.'

He gestured dismissively at the two guards who upped their glares at him and took another step forward, incensed at being so glibly mocked, but Celestia waved them off with her hoof, never once taking her eyes from the lone trooper.

'We certainly don't need you to solve a friendship problem, then,' Twilight muttered under her breath.

'Which should make you all the more worried,' Michael said. 'Because the problems that I have to solve generally aren't pretty, or without heavy casualties.'

'Assuming there is a problem in Equestria,' Celestia said. 'Nobody has come forward to say there's anything wrong, or that they need help dealing with a threat, and neither my sister or myself have sensed the presence of any great evil.'

'That sense a hundred percent reliable?'

Celestia opened her mouth to speak, only to close it a second later and shake her head, as did Luna behind her, and Twilight Sparkle and her friends.

'Great,' Michael said. 'Nobody has any fucking clue.'

He sighed and let his shoulders sag, head falling back to stare up at the ceiling in exasperation as his mind began churning away once more at the situation he found himself in. The fact he was here and alive, and able to understand the natives, pointed to someone placing him here for a specific purpose though they, whoever _they_ were, had neglected to impart that information with their chosen champion or destroyer or whatever he was to them, and the locals had just as much of a clue as to why he was here.

If they could figure out just how he had gotten here, they might be able to work up a list of everyone with that capability and ask each one if they'd had a hand in bringing him here, and then ask them why they had done it and why they hadn't left any clues behind. Alternatively, if they could figure out why Michael was here rather than decorating the streets of New Mombasa, then maybe he could return home after accomplishing his as yet unknown objectives.

Or, maybe, the people who had done this could just suddenly appear and explain themselves at lengths and shed light on this very confusing situation.

Alas, none did and Michael and his equine audience remained in the dark about the whole endeavour, and the ODST felt frustration course through him at the lack of intelligence. His hands clenched into fists and he hunched his shoulders slightly, as though readying himself for a brawl, but he forced himself to relax.

'Okay,' he said. 'Okay. So, does anybody have any idea as to our next step? Any at all?'

'I could... I could run some tests,' Twilight started to say. 'If you really are here for some purpose, and someone did bring you here, then if they used magic there should be some residual traces we might be able to identify them with. It's a long shot but, without them actually coming and telling us why, I think it's the best option we have right about now.'

 **Golden Oaks Library, Ponyville**

There were no other suggestions after that, none which held a better chance at getting Michael home at least, and Twilight Sparkle was quick in delving into the books and leather bound tomes lining the walls of her home to begin devising all manner of tests and procedures that would give her the information she required to send Michael back to Earth, leaving him free to give his equipment a much more detailed once over and ensure it was all still working perfectly.

He started with his weapons, perhaps the most important piece of equipment he had, laying them down on a spare table swept clear of books and knick knacks to begin the examinations. First up was his combat knife, easing it from the sheath on his back and holding the blade up to check for damage or rusting, and upon seeing none he slipped it back into place. Next was his battle rifle, the BR55HB SR model issued to all NCOs and marksmen upon arriving back at Earth following the Fall of Reach, and even though Michael knew it still worked after using it to shred the mini baboon earlier he still gave it a full check, stripping it and checking all the moving parts for fouling and obstructions.

Like the knife, there was nothing of any concern and soon the rifle was back in one piece, leaving just the M6G pistol strapped to his thigh which, as expected, was in more or less pristine condition and quickly returned to its rightful place. His rucksack held no nasty surprises, containing the four cans of C7 foaming explosives and two satchels of C12 shaped charges he had dropped with, a basic medical kit of biofoam, bandages and sutures, and three days worth of food.

For the most part, Michael was happy with his check but frowned at the amount of MREs his kit contained. He and the rest of the Helljumpers had geared up in preparation for an assault, a short one, within a dense urban environment on one of the most populous planets humanity had a hold on. The mission was supposed to take no more than a few hours, perhaps as many as three or four, where they would be making the initial landfall and creating breaches for follow on forces to exploit and resupply from.

The food had been more of an afterthought, in case they needed to secure the area surrounding the assault carrier and their logistical side was running into unforeseen delays whilst resupplying them, not keeping a stranded ODST alive for an indefinite amount of time. Michael knew he could last for four days on this, five if he really paced himself, but beyond that he would start to struggle and he had no idea if Equestrian food was compatible with his digestive tract.

So, to remedy that, he headed for the library's kitchen and began searching through the cupboards and the pantry, taking stock of the different kinds of food Twilight Sparkle, and Equestria as a whole, had to offer, and was more than a little surprised to see several different meals that were almost identical to ones he knew.

'Huh,' he said, his eyes staring right at a box of rice.

'What?' Applejack asked from behind him.

Michael glanced her way and said, 'You've got a lot of food that looks very familiar to stuff we have back home. Wasn't expecting that.'

'What were you expecting?'

'Anything but what I just saw.'

He closed the cupboard and returned to the main room of the library where all of Twilight's friends were sat, watching him with varied expressions that ranged from unease to disapproval. They had all introduced themselves after Celestia and Luna left, offering a bit of information about themselves and allowing Michael a chance to put names and faces to the voices he had heard outside the cottage, which belonged to Fluttershy apparently. They had tried asking him questions out of politeness and curiosity but terse, laconic answers from the human put a stop to that before long.

Now they were all sitting around and making small talk amongst themselves even as Twilight flitted between her books and a steadily growing pile of parchment, seemingly oblivious to the goings on of the world around her as she devised and envisioned all manner of contraptions and tests to put Michael through, and compiled a second list of all the materials she'd need to actually construct the required machinery and apparatus.

Running around after her was Spike, her dragon assistant, who tried to organise the paperwork and stack the discarded books into neat piles once Twilight was done with them but his task was a never ending one. As soon as one stack was finished, another pile began forming and he scurried over to it on his squat little legs to begin organising that one.

Michael stopped to watch the duo for a brief moment before casting his gaze over the inside of the library, looking for something to do. He was feeling restless and bored and in need of something to occupy himself with now his equipment check was done, fourteen years of military service always giving him something to do during those rare occasions where he wasn't fighting the Covenant or the Insurrection, usually relating to the training of new troops and managing the company's inventory given his occupation as a gunnery sergeant.

But here, in Equestria, he had no new troops to whip into shape or munitions to take stock of, no hostiles to engage in combat, just row upon row of books he didn't care to read and a bunch of civilians that weren't exactly giving off a welcoming vibe, though he only had himself to blame for that last one given his spectacular reveal and subsequent disposition when speaking with Celestia.

 _Whatever_ , Michael thought to himself as he shrugged. If they didn't like his attitude all that much, then they'd work that bit faster to get him home and out of their hair.

Seeing nothing of interest in the library, he turned his attention to the front door and the world beyond it and figured he might as well take a tour of the town, if not to alleviate his rapidly growing boredom but to give himself an idea of the possible avenues of attack, and familiarise himself with the town that might just become his home for the next few days, and the lone trooper started for the door.

'I'm going for a walk,' Michael said.

'Uh-huh,' Twilight said, her mind elsewhere, before blinking and snapping back to reality and registering just what her new guest had announced, rushing over to stand between him and the door. 'You can't go out there!'

'And why not?'Michael said.

'Because we need to keep an eye on you,' Twilight said. 'There's no telling what's going on inside you, or if interacting with the outside world will affect any traces of whoever brought you here, and because we don't know how the rest of Ponyville will react to seeing you just walking about.'

'A brilliant plan, barring some minor flaws,' Michael said. 'In the five or six hours that I've been here, I've crawled through the mud, gotten covered in blood and fur, and washed myself down with soapy water. Any physical traces will be long gone, or corrupted to high hell, and magical traces will only be affected by other magic, right? So, so long as nobody uses their magic on me, I'll be fine.

'If something is brewing within me, which it doesn't feel like, you don't have any machinery up and running yet to identify it, nor a plan to deal with it, so if something does happen to me between now and then you still won't be getting any useful data from it.

'Third, provided they don't do anything to me, I won't do anything to them. Okay?'

'Yes, but-' Twilight began, only to get cut off by the Helljumper.

'But nothing,' Michael said. 'I'm not your prisoner, nor your kidnapping victim, so you can't keep me in here against my will. Unless of course, I _am_ being held here against my will, in which case you're my _enemy_ and there's only one way I know of dealing with those.'

His hands were hanging down by his sides, inches from the grip of his pistol and the sheathed combat knife, while his eyes were boring straight into Twilight Sparkle's from behind the mirrored faceplate of his helmet, and the unicorn cast her own gaze between all three as Michael loomed over her until she relented, lowering her head and slinking to the side to give him access to the door.

With that, Michael strode past her and hauled the door open, seeing a veritable crowd of ponies lingering not too far away, their eyes all on him as they spoke in hushed whispers which he promptly ignored.

Picking a random direction, Michael headed off towards it to begin his self guided tour of Ponyville.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

 **Ponyville General Hospital, Ponyville**

The first inkling of what Michael's time in Equestria might hold came three days into his unplanned expedition to the alien planet in the form of a frantic mare breaking through the library's door, chest heaving in and out from exertion and panic, screaming something about Spike and a serious accident that had befallen the little dragon and disrupting the battery of tests Twilight was running on Michael. The unicorn had wasted little time in abandoning the equipment as it monitored her human subject's vital statistics, and he hadn't hung around to wait for her to return.

Something about the mare's tone and her choice of words set off alarm bells in his mind. She kept going on about Spike being badly burned by something, or that he had a perfectly circular hole in his stomach, and the presence of a trill of fear suggested that such wounds were not a common thing within this part of Equestria.

More worryingly, how had a dragon such as Spike been burned? According to some offhand comments made by Twilight as she combed over Michael during the examinations, attempting to make small talk, dragons could swim and bathe in lava like a human could water. Given lava was able to reach temperatures of approximately 1,600 degrees Celsius at its hottest, how hot was whatever had burned Spike badly enough to require hospitalisation?

Nothing comforting sprang into Michael's mind as he ran through Ponyville after Twilight, nor anything plausible given the lack of active magma or lava hotspots near the town, but when he laid eyes on the dragon lying in the operating theatre the colour drained from his face and a cold pit formed in his stomach.

'Plasma,' he whispered hoarsely as Twilight pressed her face as close to the glass as she could, tears streaming from her eyes at seeing her assistant lying on a surgical gurney surrounded by doctors and nurses as they attempted to treat the wounds, ones that Michael was intimately familiar with.

They were fourth degree burns, or perhaps closer to third degree given the thicker nature of dragon scales compared to human skin, showing charred tissue burnt to a crisp and flaking off in great chunks to reveal the underlying layers that were also badly burned, and on more than half of Spike's body. Michael noted they were mostly on his arms, back and parts of his head, suggesting the dragon had been cowering in fear when whoever, or whatever, had opened fire with their plasma weapons.

He leaned closer and tried to spy the circular hole the panicked mare had spoken of through the gaps between the doctors, jerking his head one way and then the other to get a better angle but the ponies working to save the dragon refused to cooperate, managing to be in just the wrong place at the wrong time to block Michael's view. With each failed sighting his irritation grew, fuelled by a need to know and an ever growing worry of what else might be on this planet beyond ponies, dragons and a stranded human.

Before long his frustration became too much and Michael strode to the theatre's doors, flinging them open and marching up to the gaggle of doctors clustered around Spike. They, in turn, paused and looked up at the new visitor before recoiling at the sight of Michael, fully suited and booted in his armour and carrying both his weapons as he approached them with heavy footfalls and a deadly air about him, parting meekly in shock to allow the ODST unrestricted access to Spike and to confirm his worst fears.

'You need to treat him for radiation poisoning too,' Michael said in a flat tone as he stood up straight, stiffening with unwanted worries from seeing the wounds. 'And check for internal burning around the wound in his stomach.'

'Wh-What?' one of the doctors stuttered out. 'Radiation?'

'Yes,' Michael said. 'Do it now.'

With that, he span about on his heel and walked out of the surgical theatre on stiff legs, taking a moment to compose himself once the doors swung shut behind him and the medical staff resumed their attempts at treating Spike, some of the junior nurses rushing off to get whatever medicine was needed to treat radiation poisoning, or perhaps just look it up. Twilight, who was still coherent enough despite her emotional state to put two and two together, was waiting for him beyond the doors.

The moment he was free of them, she slammed her hoofs into his chest and forced him against a nearby wall, shouting at him to tell her what he knew about Spike and what it meant, so Michael told her.

'He's been attacked by somebody using Covenant weapons,' he said. 'And he's got third and fourth degree burns on more than half his body, plus he took a radioactive round to the gut. Trust me when I say that's not a combination of wounds I'd want to have.'

'Is he going to be okay?' Twilight asked, though the expression on her face said she didn't want to know the answer if it was anything _but_ a solid reassurance.

'If he's lucky,' Michael said. 'You have more pressing concerns, though. If he's been attacked with weapons like that, it means the Covenant's here in Equestria, too, and that's bad news for all of us if they opened fire on Spike.'

'Wh-What are you saying?' Twilight whispered.

'I'm saying, you might be under attack.'

Like with the mare from earlier, the tone of Michael's voice was radically different from what it had been. Gone was the sarcasm, the ire, the disdain and irritation, replaced by a much colder tone of a veteran soldier recognising a threat and slipping in combat mode. Already his mind was drawing up defensive and offensive plans should the Covenant have some kind of presence in Equestria. Another part was trying to figure out just how big their garrison was, and how big it could get before it became too much for him to take on alone.

Equestria had some manner of armed force, the Royal Guards, but they were ceremonial more than anything with little but crossbows and pikes to take on a group that could easily reduce them to scattered ash on the off chance they didn't melt them to glass with a ventral plasma beam. The guards wouldn't be able to get shot one off before the Covenant blasted them to hell and moved in on the rest of the country. Of course, there was always the chance the Covenant were here to absorb the Equestrians into their caste system and turn them against humanity, whereupon Michael would go from facing maybe a few dozen troops to a whole planet's worth of hostiles.

He put both hands on Twilight and pushed her backwards, towards a chair and sat her down, dropping to a knee to look her square in the face and say, 'Get a message to Celestia telling her to start mobilising whatever forces she has, and ask if she or Luna has detected any kind of ship or meteor touching down on the planet recently. Those alien bastards didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They had to come from somewhere.'

'Y-Yeah,' Twilight said. Her response was muted, likely a combination of Spike being attacked, Michael telling her Equestria might be under attack, and the sudden shift in his tone when speaking with her. 'Um, wh-what are you going to do?'

'I'm going to find the mare who told us about Spike and ask him where she found him,' Michael said. 'Or, where she heard he was found.'

'He was out looking for gems near Whitetail Woods with Rarity,' Twilight said, only to jerk her head back with realisation upon registering what had come out of her mouth. 'Rarity!'

She jumped up and bolted for the door with such speed that Michael was sure she had teleported, or vanished from existence, not so much throwing the heavy wooden items open as smashing through them, screaming her friend's name with utmost terror and panic as images of her lying badly wounded and dying filled her head. Michael raced after her, pumping his arms and legs as fast as they could go and, for once, lamenting his bipedal form. While he could attain speeds of no more than fifteen to twenty miles an hour, if he really pushed himself, Twilight was much, much faster, and she wasn't laden down by a heavy combat load like he was, and soon Michael lost sight of her.

Thankfully, he knew roughly where Whitetail Woods was following his self guided tour around town, and he could follow the trail of destruction left behind by Twilight as she tore through town, sending other ponies flying or uprooting stalls and signs. Being a little slower, and not thinking irrationally, Michael was able to avoid adding to the carnage quite so much and arrived at the woods a little bit later than Twilight, though behind him was a massive crowd. Apparently, seeing one of the Element Bearers tearing through town in a manic state with an alien warrior close behind was a rare sight to see and much, much more interesting than whatever it was they had been doing previously.

He took a knee near a clearing host to dozens upon dozens of small holes and piles of dirt, rifle held across his chest as he scanned the terrain and tried to ignore the clamour of the crowd behind him, and Twilight Sparkle's frantic cries as she searched for her friend. The place seemed innocuous enough at first glance but as he looked closer, he saw patches of ground that had been partially vitrified from extreme temperatures, or bushes that were smouldering remains of what they had once been, the blast patterns giving him a rough idea of where the shooters had stood.

Moving forward, and with the crowd behind him following every step, Michael traced the patterns back to near the edge of the forest where he found a patch of grass trampled flat beneath several sets of feet, plus a nearly empty cartridge for a Covenant carbine.

'Shit,' Michael breathed as he scooped the small orb-like device up before tossing it away, taking a moment to examine the footprints in the dirt and grass, frowning when he did.

Years of fighting the Covenant and their various client members had taught humanity several things about them, most notably their anatomy following dissections and examinations, which included their feet though this usually was only of interest to scouts and recon units tracking them during battle. As such, Michael could recognise the indent of an Elite, a Grunt, a Jackal and a Brute reasonably well. Yet, as he crouched beside the mass of footprints where a dozen or so people armed with plasma weapons had fired from, he didn't see anything resembling a Covenant boot print.

'She's not here,' Twilight said as she ran up to the human, breathing hard. 'Rarity's not here. Did the Covenant take her?'

'No,' Michael said. 'They didn't. In fact, they were never here.'

'I thought you said they were.'

'I did,' Michael said. 'And they may well still be here on Equestria for all we know, but none of the ones I've fought were here, in the woods, firing on Spike. These guys were.'

He pointed at the mass of footprints on the ground and Twilight looked at them, taking a moment to come out with, 'Diamond Dogs.'

'Diamond what?' Michael said.

'Dogs,' Twilight said. 'They live underground, usually, and hunt for gems. They caused us some trouble a while back when they kidnapped Rarity to make her find them, but that was it. You're not suggesting they did _this_ , do you? They're cruel, but they're not evil.'

'I'm not suggesting anything. I'm looking at the evidence and drawing my own conclusions.' He stood and pointed towards the open patch of land with the piles of dirt. 'Judging by the number of different imprints, there were close to a dozen people here, and judging by the impact craters from the plasma bolts they were firing from here with only a modicum of aiming. Best guess: they were watching Spike and Rarity from here, then opened fire for some unknown reason.

'Spike got hit, numerous times, and they left him for dead, and Rarity vanished around the same time, likely a kidnapping victim. Hopefully.'

'Why hopefully?' Twilight asked.

'Where I'm from, dogs eat meat,' Michael said. 'Including horse meat. If she's not a kidnap victim for ransom, she's probably their next meal.'

'Oh, no,' Twilight whispered, abject horror on her face. 'No, that's terrible. They can't- No.'

'That's just one theory,' Michael said as he started walking to where the Diamond Dogs had roughly been shooting, sweeping his head from side to side in search of subtle little clues that would tell him what had happened.

From the looks of things, it had all played out exactly as described with the assailants opening fire on Spike and Rarity from the woods before heading out towards them where, judging by the footprints, they had surrounded Spike and opened fire again at much closer range. Then, they had surrounded Rarity and dragged her back towards the woods, which the unicorn had protested against rather vehemently according to the scruff marks surrounding where her hoofs had been, right up until they suddenly stopped and disappeared. If he had to guess, and Michael _had_ to guess, he would have gone with the Diamond Dogs tiring of Rarity's resistance and simply knocked her out, electing to carry the now unconscious unicorn rather than dragging her.

The trail led all the way into a denser part of the woods and carried on, a not so subtle path marking where the Diamond Dogs had trampled the underbrush beneath their paws.

'What time did Spike and Rarity come here?' Michael asked Twilight.

He knew, even without turning around, that she was there. After all, he was the only one who knew what was going on, and where her friend might be. She had no reason to leave his side, barring perhaps the arrival of some news concerning a critical change in Spike's status or the revelation of where Rarity was, and had in fact followed the ODST's every step as he roughed out the chain of events.

'A little after nine,' Twilight said.

'And it's a little after twelve, now,' Michael said, staring at the path trodden by the Dogs.

Spike had been discovered half an hour ago but there was no telling how long it was since the attack, meaning Rarity could be between half an hour away or three, with the gap increasing with every passing minute.

'I'm going with you,' Twilight said. 'We all are.'

'Who's we?' Michael asked as he turned his head, though really he should have expected to see the rest of Twilight's friends standing behind her with determined expressions on their faces, wearing saddlebags laden with supplies for a long trek. 'Absolutely not.'

'Why not?' Rainbow Dash asked, taking flight and putting her face mere inches from the human's. 'Those creeps really hurt Spike and kidnapped Rarity. You think we're just going to sit this one out?'

'Yes,' Michael said. 'Because they have very dangerous weapons that they're apparently willing to use. Spike can swim in lava, which can be well over sixteen-hundred degrees C, and he still got third and fourth degree burns. Do you really think you can stand up to that better than him? Oh, and then there's this.'

In one swift move he drew his pistol and rammed it into the soft flesh of Rainbow Dash's throat. She reacted pretty quickly, jerking back in shock and surprise to put some good distance between herself and the muzzle, but it still wasn't fast enough. Michael could have pulled the trigger two or three times before she moved, either killing or grievously wounding her, and they were both face to face where she could see the movement of his arm.

'What the heck are you doing?' Rainbow Dash shouted as she flew higher into the air, hoofs coming up as though readying to strike him.

'Proving a point,' Michael said. 'The Diamond Dogs have weapons, you don't, and that's not something you want when you're rescuing someone. They catch wind we're after them, they can set up an ambush and take us all out.'

'They'd never get me,' the Pegasus said. 'I'm too quick.'

'Assuming you can identify the threat,' Michael said. 'Tell me, do you know what sound a plasma rifle makes when it fires?'

'No.'

'How about a plasma pistol?'

'Well, no, but-'

'Covie carbine?'

'No-'

'Needler?'

'I don't-'

'Fuel rod cannon? That's a major thing to look out for.'

Rainbow Dash glowered at him, as did the other four, and said through gritted teeth, 'No. I don't know what any of those sound like.'

'So how can you hope to know when the shooting starts?' Michael asked.

'Because you'll be there to tell us,' Twilight Sparkle said. 'You'll hear it and shout, and we'll all do what you do or say.'

Michael looked at each of them in turn, and their brash coat colours, and resolutely shook his head.

'There is no way, _in hell_ , that I am leading the five of you on combat manoeuvres against opponents armed with plasma weapons,' he said. 'Not when you're all such eye catching colours and inexperienced. Unless the intention is for you all to die horrible, painful deaths, then sure. Let's go.'

More glowers and bared teeth from them, mostly from Rainbow Dash and Applejack.

'What, doesn't taking down Nightmare Moon and Discord count for anything?' Applejack shouted at him.

'Not based off your tales,' Michael said. 'They sound like some villain from a stupid kid's TV show, breaking up your friendship rather than, you know, breaking your necks. I'd like to see you try that on a bunch of Elites who think you're heretical beings. In fact, let's give it a test run, shall we?'

He holstered his battle rifle then held his hands out, saying, 'Take me down. Prove you can handle an Elite, and these Diamond Dogs too, by rendering me combat ineffective, though I should point out the more time we waste here means Rarity is getting further away. So go ahead.

'Make my day.'


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

 **Whitetail Woods**

None of them made any kind of move, not that Michael expected them to, so he pointed his finger at each of them in turn and said bang five times.

'And like that you're dead,' he said. 'And you could see it coming.'

'Wait, what?' Rainbow Dash said. 'No fair! We weren't ready.'

'I told you to try and take me down,' Michael said. 'You had the first shot. Instead you all stood there like fucking idiots and did nothing. How is that not ready?'

'We didn't think you were serious,' Twilight Sparkle said.

'When it comes to combat, I'm always serious,' Michael said, checking his mission clock. 'And by now Rarity has been on the move for a maximum of three hours and thirteen minutes, and counting. Even assuming regular human walking speed, that puts her a little under nine miles away at minimum.

'So please, either try to show me you've got what it takes to accompany me on this rescue op or back the fuck down already and let me do my job.'

The five ponies glared at him to varying degrees at this but made no move to back down, making Michael sigh in exasperation and roll his eyes.

'Fine,' he said. 'Let's ramp it up a little. I'm going to hide in the forests and start taking you down, one at a time, and you _will_ acknowledge when I kill you or I'll get that bit rougher each time you ignore me. Oh, and Tallahassee.'

'What-' Twilight Sparkle began to say, only to get rudely interrupted by the Helljumper as he darted forward as fast as he could to put his finger against her head and shout bang before sprinting into the forest.

'Twilight Sparkle, dead!' Michael shouted over his shoulder as he entered the trees. 'Headshot from a pistol.'

And then he was gone, darting from tree to tree and shadow to shadow, lost in the gloom within thirty seconds. The ponies hesitated then moved into the woods themselves, carefully craning their heads around in search of the ODST, only to leap back in fright as he charged from the shadows and sideswiped Twilight Sparkle, who had chosen to follow her friends in rather than stay outside, knocking her to the ground before vanishing again.

'I said acknowledge a kill, dammit,' his voice called out as Pinkie Pie and Applejack helped the unicorn to her feet. Twilight glared in the direction of the sound, a hoof resting on a sore spot along her jaw, but quietly walked out of the forest to leave four ponies.

'Jerk!' Rainbow Dash shouted as she zoomed off in the same direction that Michael had ran.

There was nothing but silence for a solid minute before Michael's voice rang out across the trees with a hint of smug satisfaction in it as he announced the blue Pegasus' demise.

'Rainbow Dash, dead. Knife to the throat.'

Moments later a pissed off looking Rainbow Dash came drifting out of the trees, a scowl on her crimson red face, and she dumped herself down next to Twilight Sparkle without looking at the last three ponies yet to try their luck.

They looked at each other and gave tentative nods, deciding there was safety in numbers, and set off as one into the woods where Rainbow Dash had just come out of. Fear kept them grouped together and ramped their senses up to eleven, snapping their heads one way and then the other at each new and unfamiliar sound. Then a pebble sailed out of nowhere and smacked Applejack straight in the rump, making her shout in surprise, and Michael called out she was now walking wounded, unable to run.

Then another pebble hit Pinkie Pie on her foreleg, which Michael meant she couldn't use it until she became 'dead'.

Fluttershy trembled and waited for one of the stone missiles to hit her and give her a 'wound' but none ever came. Instead two more struck her friends, taking away Pinkie's other leg and reducing her to a crawl and giving Applejack what Michael called a through and through that would require immediate medical aid if she didn't want to bleed out in the next twenty minutes.

It made Fluttershy squeak with a fear she hadn't felt since, well, ever, not even when she had faced off against Nightmare Moon and Discord. Perhaps it was because they hadn't tried to hide themselves, or because they hadn't actually killed or crippled her friends, or because the total number of ponies in the party kept dwindling. Michael had taken out two of their stronger members in short order and now he had 'crippled' Applejack and Pinkie Pie, both of whom had far more confidence in unfamiliar situations than her.

Three more 'bullets' flew out and hit Pinkie Pie, taking away her hind legs whilst giving her a through and through like Applejack.

'Oh, come on!' Pinkie Pie screamed in frustration, now unable to move of her own volition according to the gunnery sergeant. A sadistic chuckle rang out in response.

Applejack moved to sling the pink pony onto her back but Michael called out again.

'Failure to dress gunshot wounds. Applejack bleed out time now halved. Pinkie Pie bleed out time now halved.'

'We don't have any bandages!' Applejack shouted back at him. 'How can we dress a wound if we don't have anything to fix it with?'

'That's something you should have thought about before you came here,' he called back. 'And before you dumped all your gear with Twilight Sparkle.'

The farmer gritted her teeth and looked down at the ground in anger. Lightening their load had seemed like such a good idea at the start, meaning they could move that bit quicker and quieter, but now it was dawning on them that abandoning valuable supplies like bandages and dressings was not quite such a good idea in a combat situation.

A pebble landed before Fluttershy as she looked at her friends, making her let loose such a shrill scream of absolute terror that even Applejack and Pinkie Pie had to cover their ears as birds took flight in panic.

'Damn, I missed,' Michael said in a tone that suggested he hadn't missed in the slightest.

Fluttershy let out a quiet sob and fought back a deluge of tears as she backed away from the small object, scanning the trees for anything out of place.

'Help us,' Applejack said as she tried to carry Pinkie Pie whilst standing on three legs. 'Get some bandages from mah pack so we can stop the 'bleeding', and maybe we can find him and show what we can really do.'

'Please,' Pinkie Pie said.

Then, like a demonic spectre, Michael chimed in with, 'Yes, please help them Fluttershy. This is their most desperate hour. Help them, Fluttershy. You're their only hope.'

He threw more stones and took away the rest of Applejack's legs. She paused for a moment, rolled her eyes in exasperation, then unceremoniously dropped herself to the floor with Pinkie Pie still on her back.

'Pinkie Pie bleed out time now five minutes. Applejack bleed out time now three minutes. It's all up to you now, Fluttershy.'

She squeaked in fear and started taking small steps away from her fallen friends, slowly at first but gradually gaining more speed as terror began to take root in her heart. Sweat beaded on her coat and flew off in great rivulets as she ran across the undulating terrain, Michael's cruel laughter echoing across the land as Applejack and Pinkie Pie called out for her to come back and help.

Then they stopped abruptly seconds before Michael called out, 'Applejack and Pinkie Pie, dead. Torn to bloody shreds by a fragmentation grenade. You're all that's left Fluttershy. You're next. You're _mine_.'

She just ran in random directions, darting one way and then the next in what she hoped was an effort to throw the human off, though before Fluttershy knew it she was hopelessly lost in the forest. Despite knowing Whitetail Woods inside and out, Michael's efforts at unbalancing her had worked perfectly to the point that all Fluttershy could see were gnarled and twisted trees that cast menacing shadows and seemed to leer at her with gaping maws.

Her throat went bone dry and her wings clamped themselves tight against her body, absolutely refusing to move even an inch, and Fluttershy came to a screeching halt in a small clearing. Tears ran freely down her face as she stared up at the trees in terror.

'Fluttershy, Fluttershy, please don't lie,' Michael's disembodied voice crooned out at her. 'I see that you've started to cry. If Pegasi can fly, then why aren't you in the sky? I can only wonder why, but do you maybe want to die?'

His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, taunting her, and his rhyming was just making the situation worse. Fear continued to well up inside her, but now so too did anger. At him for being so cruel against ponies who just wanted to help find their friend, at the Diamond Dogs who had taken Rarity and hurt Spike, and mostly herself for letting herself get worked up into this state. Nightmare Moon and Discord were things to be afraid off because they wielded such power, and had the sadism to use it to make the lives of others miserable.

This was little more than a game, albeit with high stakes, and Michael wasn't playing very fairly. He was always hiding, striking at them when they weren't looking and using cheap intimidation tactics to disorientate her. She had no reason to be afraid of a coward, not after the things she had done in service of Equestria's defence.

'Coward!' she shouted into the trees. 'Why don't you show yourself? Are you too afraid to face us when you cheat? We just want to get our friend back and help however we can! You're just a bully and a coward!'

Silence answered her rather than a cutting remark or some mocking taunt, which somehow managed to simultaneously embolden Fluttershy and terrify her beyond capacity. It spurred her on because she thought her comments had struck a nerve deep within Michael and it was his turn to fume and get angry, but it was terrifying too because it marked a major shift in his operating method.

The half of her that thought she'd struck a nerve won out by a small margin and Fluttershy began calling out again, each sentence out of her mouth that met with silence egging her on that bit more.

'That's it, isn't it?' she cried. 'You're just a coward. You don't want us along because then we'll see you for what you really are! A coward! You're all bark and no bite!'

There was nothing but silence for a long, long moment, and Fluttershy felt her courage begin to falter again. No noise from Michael was not a good thing, and suddenly the forest no longer looked recognisable but demonic. Her heart began to pound in her chest and the demure Pegasus slowly started to creep backwards. Where, she didn't know. She just wanted to get somewhere familiar and safe and light and without anything for the ODST to hide in.

Alas, her hopes wouldn't come to pass as a gauntleted hand flashed across her vision and clamped itself over her mouth, muffling a scream of terror into a mere squeak as another hand pressed the blade of a knife up against her throat.

'Fluttershy, dead,' Michael said, directly into her ear. 'Throat slit by knife. You lose.'

She let out a whimper and sagged to the ground as Michael released his hold on her. He moved to stand before the mare and looked down at her, his expression unreadable behind that silver faceplate of his, but Fluttershy was certain it didn't hold a kind expression. Not only had she and her friends failed, but the moment Michael's hand had clamped down over her mouth she wet herself, and as she lay in puddle of her own piss Michael turned around and left.

 **Somewhere in Whitetail Woods**

The Equestrians hadn't made any more efforts to join him on the rescue mission, a fact Michael was thankful for, but neither had they wished him luck on his endeavour. Rather, they glared daggers at him upon seeing the state Fluttershy was in when she returned to them. Her eyes were raw and bloodshot from crying, her mane was matted with sweat, and she stank of urine. Rainbow Dash in particular had given him a deathly stare that could have levelled a mountain, but Michael had shrugged it off.

He wasn't here to make friends with any of them. In fact, he wasn't even sure _why_ he was here to begin with, but he was fairly certain it had something to do with Diamond Dogs armed with Covenant weapons. Things like that didn't just drop into the hands of people who would use them for ill, not without outside intervention. If that were the case, was he the pawn of some opposite group that wanted to stop the plans of whoever had distributed the guns?

Maybe, but that was a query for another day, one where he wasn't deep inside a forest he didn't know and following the trail of about a dozen or so Diamond Dogs. They weren't exactly making his job a hard one, leaving all manner of footprints and broken branches, even the occasional pile of shit that was still lukewarm, suggesting they weren't too far ahead of him. He had already followed their trail for well over an hour now, taking it at a steady jog to maximise his speed without using up too much energy, of which he had already used up a fair deal during his war game against the ponies.

Perhaps it hadn't been the best of ideas to approach it like an Elite and play with his targets, whittling them down one by one and tormenting them with psychological warfare once it got down to one, but he had needed to get his point across they weren't ready, at all, for what he was about to do. There was no telling what training the Diamond Dogs had to go along with their new weapons.

If someone had bestowed these terrible gifts upon them, they might have also passed along some manner of training in their proper usage beyond this is the trigger and this is where the hot stuff comes out. Things like watching their flanks as they moved through an area, or posting a rearguard in case someone was following them, or having squads taking parallel routes as cover for the main force, ready to ambush any would be attackers when they made their move.

For a short while he worried that the route he was following was just a little too _obvious_ for trained personnel to have made, what with all the debris they had created, and he thought it was part of a trap he was walking right into. But then he relaxed. The Diamond Dogs had barely been able to aim their rifles enough to hit Spike and Rarity from a comparatively short distance, and anyone who couldn't train their troops to fire accurately wasn't good enough to train them in crafting masterful deceptions like blazing an obvious trail into a trap.

Even so, Michael had slowed his pace a little out of caution but not so much it would take too long to find the kidnapped unicorn.

It still took close to three hours before he stumbled across the group and, like him, they were starting to feel the strain of marching so quickly through the forest. Unlike him, they had chosen to take a long break rather than popping a quick stim and downing a mug of lukewarm coffee.

There were fourteen of them spread out around some little natural spring sat in a dip in the forest, half of them curled up asleep and the other half either lethargically gazing out at the trees or gnawing on bones. The largest dog there held a leash that was attached to Rarity, the normally pristine looking unicorn covered in dirt and bruises after her arduous trek and wearing matching shackles around her hoofs. She seemed to have resigned herself to her fate, meekly lying next to her captor with her head in her hoofs, shaking ever so slightly as she sobbed.

All of the dogs carried Covenant weapons for certain, around fifty-fifty in terms of plasma rifles and pistols, with who Michael assumed to be the leader carrying a carbine.

None of them seemed overly alert by any major measure, just the leader who kept tugging Rarity's leash every now and then to choke her whilst letting out a howl of laughter when she gagged at the rope tightening around her neck.

Perfect.

All the worries Michael had dreamt up as he followed their trail began rapidly dissipating at seeing just how unprofessional they were. Any commander worth his weight would have ensured his sentries were alert rather than toying with their captive, and he wouldn't have rested them in a natural dip that limited their sight lines. The ODST could peek his head over the brim and look down on them without fear of being seen, not that the sentries were alert enough to be looking in his direction.

He clocked the positions of everyone and worked out a rough plan of who he was going to shoot first and how, then the lone Helljumper unlimbered his battle rifle to rest the crosshairs on his first unlucky victim, a faint smile creeping onto his face.

After spending three days in that diabetes inducing town called Ponyville, he was itching to get some real action. Too bad his opponents were stupid mutts.

With that thought, he pulled the trigger.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

 **Somewhere in Whitetail Woods**

The battle, if it could really be called that, lasted less than thirty seconds and without any of the Diamond Dogs getting a single shot off. None of them were all that alert to start with, assured of their safety by the plasma weapons they carried and the distance they had travelled into the woods, and fewer still recognised the report of Michael's rifle as he opened up on them, starting with the sentry closest to him.

Had they been human fighters, they would have known the sharp crack echoing across the dip for what it was and responded accordingly. But because the natives of this planet had yet to develop a recognisable firearm beyond maybe a cannon they had no intimate knowledge of gunfire, so by the time they realised somebody was shooting up their party more than half of them were dead, and by the time they had narrowed down the rough location Michael was shooting from they were _all_ dead, the last one to fall being their leader.

For the most part, the outcome was exactly as the lone Helljumper had predicted with all fourteen of the Diamond Dogs dead or dying as he stood and moved into the depression. The one thing that hadn't quite gone to plan, however, was Rarity. She had marginally more familiarity with gunfire than her captors did, what with her being preset when Michael had so dramatically revealed himself at Fluttershy's cottage, and realised what was happening long before they did and triangulated the source quicker too.

Emboldened, she delivered a kick potent enough to launch her kidnapper back several feet and catch him unawares before running towards her saviour. The problem arose when the Diamond Dog scrambled back to his feet, enraged, and aimed his carbine at the fleeing unicorn with murderous intent in his eyes. Michael couldn't be sure of his aim, or if he would just maim Rarity without actually killing her, so he erred on the side of caution and fired first. The dog dropped and remained still even as Michael emerged from his eyrie and drew close to them, rifle held level and ready as he went to inspect his handiwork.

The few Diamond Dogs who still clung onto life received a second round to put them out of their misery, ending the low and mournful howls of pain that drifted across the area, and were relieved of any and all weapons by Michael as he moved between them. It was less about leaving dangerous equipment around for someone else to find and more about supplementing his own limited supplies. Each of the weapons still had around ninety percent of a charge left, equal to maybe three or four hundred shots, plus five spare cartridges for the carbine.

Michael pocketed what he could and tied everything else to his pack, then snorted when he realised he looked like some kind of action hero getting ready to storm the bad guy's stronghold and put a stop to their evil plans with all the firearms strapped to him. Then he bemoaned the extra weight he had added, almost eighty kilos worth, and moved as quickly as he could to Rarity as she sat in the lee of a gnarled tree, staring over the body strewn battlefield with mute shock.

'Hey, you okay?' Michael asked gently as he took a knee next to the unicorn, reaching up to take his helmet off.

'I...' Rarity began before stopping, closing her mouth as she gave Michael a fleeting look before turning away again.

'Any injuries?' Michael said. 'Did they hurt you at all?'

'Not... directly,' Rarity said in a low voice.

'Show me.'

'It's nothing, gunnery sergeant. Save your supplies for something more worthwhile.'

'That's for me to decide,' Michael said. 'And I can't decide if you don't show me what they did.'

Rarity shivered slightly and bowed her head, but did as asked and turned to show him the other side of her face with Michael noting that she had pulled her mane down to cover it, and that there were several sections that had been singed to leave brown edges and in random patterns. Even as he brushed it aside he knew what the injury would be and, as expected, saw her coat had burned away and the skin beneath was both red raw and covered in a spider web pattern of cuts typical of white hot shrapnel.

Michael himself had more than a few such injuries on his body and they came about when plasma hit something like a rock or concrete that then shattered upon coming into contact with the three-thousand degree projectile, exploding like a fragmentation grenade to shower everyone nearby with debris that was just as hot as the plasma that caused it. Rarity's wound was directly on her cheek with the blast pattern heading towards her mouth and forehead, though by some miracle the shrapnel had missed her eye completely. Instead a fair sized chunk was missing from her eyebrow.

The ODST was quick to pull out his first aid kit and root around for a suitable sized dressing for the wound but Rarity put her hoof on his hand to stay it, saying, 'It's nothing, gunnery sergeant. Save your supplies-'

'For when I need them,' Michael cut in, pushing her hoof away. 'Yeah, I know, and it's now that I need them. This is a third degree burn and it needs immediate attention, Rarity. Trust me, I've seen and suffered more than a few such injuries myself.'

She relented and allowed Michael to dress the wound, wincing on occasion as he disturbed the burnt flesh, and offered a muted thank you when he finally sat back to admire his work. Like all his other instances of administering combat first aid, it was a crude effort that could have been done quicker and better by any navy corpsman but, as was often the saying, it just had to hold until they could get to proper facilities and personnel.

'Will it leave a scar?' Rarity asked.

'Yes,' Michael said, seeing no point in lying. 'How much of one depends on how skilled the doctors in Ponyville are, or wherever you go for treatment.'

'How bad are yours?'

'Terrible, but then the doctors who patched me back together were navy and they look down on ground pounders. I wouldn't be surprised if they sewed in some rude and obscene gesture as a prank.'

It was a poor joke but it made Rarity laugh regardless, a small chuckle escaping past her lips as she tried her best to avoid agitating her wound more than she needed to, which was good. If you could still laugh then you weren't beaten yet was another saying amongst Marines and soldiers, though it was usually followed by something along the lines of if you ain't beat then you can still fight. Michael had heard it said by his superiors many times before, and he had said it to his subordinates even more times as he tried to rally them during an attack.

He eased himself into a sitting position next to Rarity, back against the tree, and joined her in staring out over the depression that was host to fourteen dead bodies with half lidded eyes. Today had been a long one and sleep was desperately calling out to him, doubly so because evening was fast approaching and long shadows stretched out across the forest floor. This was a problem because Ponyville was more than fifteen miles away by Michael's reckoning and whilst it had only taken him around three hours to cover it coming this way, he doubted the return journey would be as quick.

Rarity was still in shock and likely exhausted from all the emotional turmoil of the day's events, so her rate of advance wouldn't be all that great, and travelling back in the dark didn't sound like something she could easily do given her lack of night optics. All it would take was one misplaced step in some unseen hole to break a leg and slow them down even further.

'Think you can make it back home tonight?' Michael asked.

'I... I can try,' Rarity said. 'It is getting quite dark, though.'

'Yeah,' Michael said. 'We might be able to make it one or two miles before the sun dips down entirely. Then we'd have to cover the rest of it in the dark, all thirteen or so miles of it all.'

'Are we really that far from Ponyville?' Rarity asked.

'More or less,' Michael said with a shrug. 'I wasn't really keeping track.'

Rarity laughed at that but nodded sagely, her head sagging forward more than it should have to give some indication about how tired she actually was.

'Maybe we can move whilst there's still light, then sleep until dawn,' she offered. 'I know they must all be worried sick about us back home but I'd rather get there without suffering any more injuries. If that's okay with you, gunnery sergeant.'

'That's fine by me,' Michael said before offering a tired smile. 'I just wish we'd thought of that before I sat down. Now I've got to try and stand up with all of this heavy gear attached to me.'

That earned another chuckle from the unicorn as the Helljumper struggled to his feet, teetering one way and then the other from the excessive weight attached to his rucksack, and Rarity soon joined him in standing and then returning to the trail that would lead them back to Ponyville, both their feet stumbling every now and then over obstacles that may or may not have been there.

'Are your parents going to be okay with you spending the night, alone, in the woods, with a member of the opposite sex?' Michael asked as they walked.

'This isn't the first time I've found myself in such a situation,' Rarity said with a suggestive tone. 'Just ask Caramel when we get home.'

 **Somewhere in Whitetail Woods**

Their home for the night was little more than a slight depression in the ground, deep enough to take them out of the gentle breeze blowing through the trees but shallow enough that it wouldn't take too long to scramble out of it, and they set about making it as comfortable as they could with the materials available, though this amounted to Michael taking a camouflaged poncho and spreading it across the hole with a stick in the middle to hold it all up. Rarity didn't complain, curling up into a ball once the shelter was in place and falling into a deep sleep with Michael joining soon after, though he slept lightly.

There was always the chance of other Diamond Dogs roaming the woods in search of them and without another Helljumper or remote sensors, his ability to distinguish between the natural sounds of the woods and those of a person moving through them was the only early warning system he and Rarity had to protect them. Thankfully, dawn came before any patrols did and the two of them were quick to break camp and resume their homeward journey at a sedate pace, talking only occasionally as they kept their ears open for unnatural sounds.

During one such conversation, Rarity broached the subject that had to have been weighing on her mind since being abducted.

'How's Spike?' she asked. 'The Diamond Dogs... Well, I'm sure you saw what happened.'

'He was in surgery, the last I knew,' Michael said. 'Critically injured but alive.'

'Do you think he'll pull through?'

'I can't tell,' Michael said with a shake of his head. 'He suffered more than a few plasma burns based on what I saw, plus a carbine round to the gut. That would be enough to put a human down but we're not able to swim in lava like dragons can. That might have cut down on the severity of the burns a little, maybe enough to save him.'

'So, there's hope?'

'I guess.'

Rarity could only give nod at that and adopted a concerned expression, staring intently at the trail before her without actually looking at it. Her attention was elsewhere at this moment, likely on the little purple and green dragon or maybe on Twilight Sparkle and the torment and anguish she was going through right now. It was a state Michael had been in many times himself, worrying about an ODST under his command that the Covenant had badly wounded and was being seen to by navy doctors, their future hanging by a thread.

Sometimes he never learned of their fate for months at a time, rushing from one battlefield to the next and with too shoddy a communications network to get word down to him, with it being roughly fifty-fifty as to whether the news was good or bad. What would it be when they returned to Ponyville, Michael wondered. Might the doctors of Ponyville General have performed a miracle and saved Spike, or might they have failed in the face of injuries they had yet to encounter and develop methods for treating?

As they drew closer to Ponyville, the more this seemed to weigh on Rarity's mind as she gradually began to pick up speed with every mile they covered until the unicorn was moving at a moderate trot that caused Michael to break out into a jog to keep up with, a task made all the harder by the Covenant equipment he was carrying. By the time they were less than two miles away, he was sweating and breathing hard from the exertion and still Rarity increased her speed, eventually leaving the gunnery sergeant behind as civilisation became faintly visible through the trees.

He let her go and slowed his pace a little to try and catch his breath, emerging from the woods only a few minutes behind Rarity to see she was already swept up in masses of hugs from the ponies that had mounted some kind of vigil for the return of the duo, setting up tents of all sizes around the area. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were front and centre with the hugging, tightly squeezing their friend as though their lives depended on it.

Michael just watched it all unfold from afar, not wanting to get involved in such an overt display of emotion and unsure if the two Pegasi would be all that happy to see him again after yesterday's events. Rainbow Dash had seemed on the verge of causing physical harm to the ODST when he left to fetch Rarity and Fluttershy was barely able to even look in his general direction. Even so, the demure yellow Pegasus was the first to actually acknowledge the human's presence and disentangled herself from the crowd to shuffle over to him, averting her gaze, only to rush forward and wrap her hoofs around his waist in such a quick hug that Michael couldn't be sure she had actually made physical contact.

'T-Thank you,' Fluttershy managed to squeak out, maintaining her lack of eye contact. 'For getting her back.'

'Don't mention it,' Michael said. 'Just doing my job.'

Fluttershy squeaked out another thank you then darted back to the crowd as it began moving towards the hospital to get Rarity checked in for her burn, Michael waiting until they were gone from sight to move off on his own path to Golden Oaks Library, still keenly aware of the eighty kilos of plasma weaponry strapped to his back and his own desperate need to be rid of the weight, and to have a proper meal.

 **Golden Oaks Library**

The library was quiet when he stepped inside but that was to be expected, not that it stayed silent for long as Michael dumped his gear with little in the way decorum and grace and began banging around in the kitchen as he set about making himself a hearty meal, or as close to one as he could manage in the predominantly herbivore culture that was Equestria. The only saving grace was that they still had eggs and he doubled up on his serving of them to stand in for the bacon and sausages that normally came with breakfast.

As he ate, Michael's assumption that the library was empty was broken when Twilight Sparkle came down from up above, her mane a tangled mess and her eyes bloodshot from crying, and she lingered on the upper steps as she looked down at Michael and his meal, only to switch to the collection of Covenant weapons littering the floor with her expression taking on a hint of distaste.

'Rarity's safe,' Michael said. 'She's at the hospital right now.'

Twilight said and did nothing, expressing neither gratitude nor relief at the news her close friend was back after fearing for her life only yesterday. She just continued to look at the ODST with that unwavering expression as he sat at the table and ate his food.

Then she said, 'Spike's dead.'

'Oh,' Michael said. 'I'm sorry for your loss.'

'Are you really?' Twilight said.

'Yes,' Michael said. 'I've lost more than a few people close to me. I know how bad it can hurt.'

'Do you?' Twilight said.

She looked like she was about to burst into tears, or just start shouting in rage and anger at Michael for something, real or imagined. He elected to keep his mouth shut lest he say or do something that might incur her wrath. Dealing with civilians who had experienced the loss of a close and personal friend was always a tricky thing to do because they hardly ever prepared themselves mentally for it, and even when they did it was never enough to quell the torrent of unfamiliar and overwhelming emotions that came from losing a loved one.

'He died not long after we left the hospital,' she continued. 'Whilst we were playing those stupid games of yours. When you were pretending to kill us.'

Michael said nothing. He knew what Twilight was trying to do. She was projecting her anguish onto something external as a means of trying to cope with losing Spike and he was probably the best candidate for it all, given his familiarity with the weapons that had killed the dragon and his antagonistic behaviour in Whitetail Woods yesterday, and there was nothing he could do or say presently that would sway Twilight Sparkle to think otherwise. She was far too emotional to listen to anything, not even her usual rational thought processes.

So Michael just finished off his meal and gathered up his things, and headed towards the front door. When he reached it, he turned back to look at Twilight Sparkle and said, 'Grieve, then come speak to me when you're thinking more clearly. You know I'm not responsible for Spike's death.'


End file.
